


There Will Come Soft Rains

by kermiethefrog



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Death, Codependent Winchesters (Supernatural), Feral Sam Winchester, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 10:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14932595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kermiethefrog/pseuds/kermiethefrog
Summary: John kills the Yellow-Eyed Demon when Sam and Dean are young; in turn, he is killed in the fight, leaving his boys stranded in a cabin in the middle of the wilderness to fend for themselves. Ten years later, they are found, and they struggle to adjust to the world they left behind.





	There Will Come Soft Rains

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [2018 SPN WIP Big Bang](https://spnwipbang.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Inspired by [this prompt](http://shapeshifterlore.tumblr.com/post/75540515363/wincest-au-where-john-finds-and-kills-the-yed-when).
> 
> Sam and Dean are six and ten respectively when John dies, making them sixteen and twenty when they are found. Title comes from Ray Bradbury's short story _There Will Come Soft Rains_.

Here were the things that made up his home:

Two guns—one rifle, one pistol, no ammo. Dean used up the last bullet eight years ago. He was too young to know he should have kept it, just in case; he was too young, and he knew better now.

Three blades—bowie, guthook, machete. He had four, at one point, but one was lost in the haunch of a stag. He broke his arm and it had never set back straight, aching when the rain billowed through the canopy. The fever he broke the next day nearly killed him; the panic in Sam’s shaking hands kept him clinging to life. Dean learned then, too.

Four bags. One for Dean, clothes that didn’t fit. One for Sam, just the same. One for the guns, the knives; other things, too, a flint block, emptied med kit, container of salt, gasoline Dean had never touched. One for Dad, and the clothes were still big on their fast-growing bodies. They used to smell like Dad, but now they smelled like wood rot and moss and twilight-drawn dew. Dean couldn’t remember what Dad smelled like anymore, anyway.

Two beds. One had never been used. Cold nights required warmth, and Sam’s blood ran hot. Sam sweated enough for the both of them and left Dean’s side damp in the crux of summer. It kept them alive in winter. Better than a fire and kept close to his heart.

One brother. Sam.

Sam.

—

Two and a half months had passed since the last time he saw Dad before they ran out of expired cans of soup and chili. Dean’s stomach rattled on empty for two days as Sam cried into his shoulder, hitching high-pitched whines.

“I don’t feel good, Dean, I’m starving,” his baby brother sobbed. Dean held him close and relented, opening the last rationed can of chicken noodle they had left.

Dean had two spoonfuls, and his guts churned desperately at the offering. He closed his eyes tight against the pain and the saliva flooding his mouth, acrid and wanting like the bile threatening to rise. Sam sat close to his chest and let himself be fed every bite; when the can was emptied, Sam wrapped his small fingers around Dean’s wrist to hold him steady as he greedily licked the spoon clean.

“It still hurts,” Sam wept, blinking hot tears into Dean’s collar. “Do we got anymore food? I’m so hungry, Dean. Please, my tummy hurts so much.”

Dean tucked Sammy into bed, picked up the rifle, and started into the forest.

The things Dad taught him could fit in a leather-bound journal. All of the things that went bump in the night in neat lines, every exercise to keep his senses sharp—Dad gave him everything he needed to stay alive. He taught Dean how to be prepared to kill something with his own hands, how to find the strength to do the things he needed to keep Sammy safe, how to smother panic and fear until all that was left was the afterimage of a haunting, proud smile. 

The things Dean remembered about Dad could fit in a leather-bound journal, too. Car grease and calloused hands, the serious line of his brow, his words, always at the forefront of Dean’s mind. _Take care of Sammy._ His one and only job, the only duty that ever mattered, entrusted to him when he was four years old. It was the only thing that stuck with him where everything else began to fade over time, as if it was branded on his ribcage. 

Everything that was their father could be expounded into a single bullet, cutting clean into the lung of a doe. Everything that was their father’s teachings could be narrowed into the sharp edge of the blade that Dean dragged across the animal’s throat, fingers shaking against its labored breathing. Everything that was Dad, every last memory, every word and emotion, could be summarized by the bile biting back in Dean’s mouth as his fingers were drenched in warm blood, face grim as he sliced open the beast.

Ten years old and feeling impossibly older, Dean brought back half of the meat—all of the weight he could cut and carry—and fed his brother’s growing appetite. That night, Sammy went to sleep with a sated belly, curled with comfort and iron-rich warm, and Dean’s hands stopped shaking.

Sammy never went hungry again. Dean made sure of that.

—

Dean counted days at the start.

He had a calendar that he hung up, once. 1989. It had different kinds of muscle cars depicted each month. He kept careful track of the days, crossing out each sunrise, waiting for their father to return with bated breath. It was suspended in his lungs for so long that sometimes Dean didn’t know how to breathe anything that wasn’t stagnant and hope-dusty.

He made a calendar for the year following once the months were up. Sammy asked him why, and Dean hadn’t said anything at all, but there was something desperate in him that clung to the routine. It kept him tethered to something human; Sam didn’t care about the days of the week or the hours of the day or the minutes ticking by without civilization, without bacon burgers and rock music. Sometimes, Dean felt like Sam didn’t care about anything that wasn’t the wild—sometimes, Dean felt like Sam was just going through the motions for his sake.

They celebrated their first birthdays in the cabin. January twenty-fourth, May second. They celebrated their second ones, too, through Dean’s careful tracking, his deliberate crosses through calendars drawn on the backs of maps. 

By the time Dean turned fourteen, he couldn’t count the days anymore. By the time he was fourteen, he realized Dad was never coming back.

Birthdays spread out weeks when exact dates blurred. Dean’s twentieth birthday started with the first snowfall over Sam’s lower lip and ended when the last of it melted away from the soft-blooming grass. Sam’s sixteenth began with the gentle patter of raindrops tapping on the rooftop and ended when the swelter of sweat-slick and close-pressed bodies required lakewater to cool down. Boys born in winter and spring.

Dean tried to hold fast to the things that kept him tethered to the old world: books, Dad’s handwriting, the record player and its disks that were useless without power. He taught Sam every word he knew and all the ones he didn’t, strange and foreign on his tongue as he parsed them out from dusty dictionaries; things he didn’t know how to pronounce but tried anyway, just because Sam asked about them, just because Dean didn’t want to discourage Sam from these human tetherings. Old songs he only half-remembered just to hear them in Sam’s scratchy voice. Old stories, too, even if he was never sure if they were memories or long-since-gone picture books of knights and kings.

Dean could feel it slipping from him. Sam took his hands and pulled him everclose to the edge of the wilderness, the shadowed treeline of an unforgiving forest, his growing frame eager to drop in and never return. Dean resisted; he tugged Sam back into his arms and kept him domestic and tamed, safe. For years, Dean kept him safe.

But Sam was older now, and the dark thing in his chest was growing unruly; Sam was stronger now, and Dean could feel his foothold giving, a gentle dragging into the dark.

—

Dean’s favorite book on the shelves had autumn-browned pages, crisp and delicate in his fingers. Sam poured over the ones about monsters; both human and inhuman alike, tracing over words like he wanted to brand them into his skin. He relayed their contents while they walked through clovered underbrush, Sam’s fingers curious where they touched every tree they passed.

“Ted Bundy helped authorities catch another serial killer,” Sam recited, “called the The Green River Killer. Gary Ridgway.”

Dean bent down, humming in acknowledgment as he dragged the snare out of hiding. The caught rabbit struggled with new vigor, beating its feet against the soft soil; a quick motion of Dean’s hand, and it laid limp. He reset the snare and stepped away from the trap, taking a glance around him to decide on a low branch. When he held his hand out, Sam provided, and Dean tied the rope around its back legs before he hitched it over the branch, tying another knot to keep the hung rabbit in place.

“Ridgway was presumed to have killed upwards of over ninety people. He would strangle them and then have sexual intercourse with their bodies post-mortem.”

Dean cut the rabbit’s throat in one easy move, letting the blood drain out as he tossed the head a distance away. He stared out into the forest, breathing in the rolling mist; it was early now, but once the sun hit the peak of the sky, they’d both be sweating in the summer heat. He hoped to be shoulder deep in lakewater by then, already anxious to be free of the smother of the tight treeline. Five more snares to go, and then a larger trap—he always saved that one for last. Maybe it helped soothe his nerves if he caught small game; he didn’t have to hope and rely on unlikely chances. Maybe it was because there were worse things than wolves that lived in the woods.

They’d caught something big a year back. Dark eyes and unfurling claws; the way it moved, quick and shaking and wicked, terrified him. Sam’s fingers dug into his arm where Dean had it splayed across his brother’s chest, keeping him a step back.

“Wendigo?” Dean asked, quiet, eyes steady and unwavering, even as his hand shook.

“They don’t live outside of Minnesota,” Sam whispered, breathless. Dean could feel his brother’s heart beating underneath his palm. “Chupacabra, maybe. We—we could double back, find out how to gank it.”

Dean had unsheathed the machete from his side; the sound still lingered in the chill of his bones. “Everything dies without its head,” he had answered; words Dad used to say. He wished he had told Sam not to look; he wished he had told Sam to double back. After, Dean washed the blood off his brother’s face with cold river water; Sam’s lips were trembling where they were pressed against his own. Fear was forever present, consistent since Dean was a child. He held Sam tight and swallowed Sam’s fear with the heat of his tongue and the bite of his teeth, letting it build up in his stomach with all the fear that he refused to show.

“I wish we had more books on criminal pathology.”

Dean took in a sharp breath, coming into the present with quick blinks. He tilted his head, casting a look over his shoulder at where Sam’s fingers were plucking blue blooms and popping them into his mouth. A lucky flower was tucked into his wild hair, pushed back behind his ears; Dean used to keep it trimmed short when they were younger, but Sam preferred the untamed curl against his shoulders. When Sam was pressed against the mattress, hair spread around his head like something immortal and biblical, he looked beautiful. Dean stopped cutting it. 

Sam held out a chicory bloom for him. Dean’s tongue laid flat against his brother’s fingers when he took the offering, and Sam spared no time bringing the wetness to his own lips.

“We still have books on Gacy you haven’t read,” Dean teased, turning to face him fully. Sam crouched again, bangs shadowing his eyes as he gathered more flowers into the net of his shirt. His shoulders created a tense line, and Dean reached down, fingertips pressing against the warmth of Sam’s throat. His brother tilted into it before stilling, brows furrowed when he looked up at Dean; he turned his head when Dean’s thumb stroked over his cheek and nipped at it petulantly. Dean laughed, pressing the pad of his thumb against Sam’s tongue, and his brother bit down harder, teeth indenting until a sharp canine broke the skin of his knuckle. Dean hissed, pulling back his hand, and Sam’s came out whip-fast, holding his wrist tight. “Bitch,” Dean shot out, even as he let his arm be captured.

Sam lapped at the beading blood as an apology, a kiss placed into Dean’s palm. He offered his mouth again, lips parted and eyelids lowered, and Dean pressed his wondering thumb back into it, gliding over his tongue. Sam was more animal than human when he grew wanting—it was no exception now, and Sam’s fingers slid from Dean’s wrist to his thighs as he slipped into kneeling. His palms were overheated and desperate where they cupped Dean through his jeans, fingers scrambling for his zipper; his lips closed around Dean’s thumb, sucking with intent. 

“Hey, not now,” Dean croaked out. Sam let out a huff and gave him a dark look, childish and needy, teeth biting down on Dean’s thumb again as he tried to stick his hand down Dean’s waistband. Dean yanked his hand back, leaning over to grab onto Sam’s wrists—his brother, struggling and wild, let out an animalistic growl, teeth gnashing out for the soft peak of his lower lip. Dean let him take it, let Sam bite at his mouth and smear his blood over their tongues, let him sate the feral desire that sat always-heavy in Sam’s stomach. Dean kissed him until his brother softened, until he was quiet pants and open-throated sweet moans, and Sam went still and pliant in his grip.

When Dean released his hold, Sam wrapped his arms around Dean’s neck and pulled him closer, dragging Dean onto his knees. He tilted his head up, fingers pressing into the back of Dean’s head, and Dean leaned in to where Sam was trying to nudge him; his lips met sweat-salted skin, burning hot under his mouth. Tongue lathed over a jumping pulse point, canines scraped over the same, and Sam went willow-soft and bending under the comfort. Dean’s cheek, rough with stubble, dragged against his brother’s jaw, and Dean pushed his nose into Sam’s throat and breathed in deep, filling his lungs with the scent of him.

By the time Sam let him go, he looked more human. Dean offered up one final kiss, a dry, chaste gift, before he stood, taking down the rabbit and slinging it over his shoulder. “C’mon. We still got work to do,” he instructed.

Sam picked up the dropped blooms and stuffed his pockets with them. He stood steady and patient when Dean reached out to fix the one in his hair, and the falling summer shower left dewdrops in Sam’s bangs. 

Dean thought about his favorite book.

“There will come soft rains,” he recited as he walked on. Sam followed close behind him—raised in the forest but tamed by his big brother’s hands. “And the smell of the ground, and swallows circling with their shimmering sound.”

“In the living room, the voice-clock sang,” Sam cut in, mumbled with the petals on his tongue, as raindrops trailed down their cheeks like gentle tears, “tick-tock, seven o’clock.”

—

There was a sound outside, like rolling thunder, like rattling beams. Dean’s hand wrapped around the bedside knife, body shocked into sitting up; Sam stirred at his side, face sweat-slick and burrowed into the mattress. His eyes opened, a slow blink of unfurling lashes, and Dean reached down to press his hand over Sam’s mouth before his brother could speak.

One finger over his own lips. Sam nodded, wide eyes turning fox-narrow and alert, and they extricated themselves from the bed with easy rolls onto their feet. The night air was cool on Dean’s bare skin, but his focus was on the distant sound, its slow rumbling, the scrape and creak of something unnatural. It was familiar to him, but he couldn’t place it; like a taste on the tip of his tongue, bittersweet and forgotten.

Two fingers motioned to the back door. Sam nodded, steps mute—he was so much lighter on his feet than Dean was. Quick and filled with fury, an instinct that was more fight than flight. Dean watched his brother disappear through the back before he stepped to the front-facing window.

Its curtains were ratty, but they provided enough cover. Dean knew—he knew all of the house’s weak spots, all of its hiding places, everywhere it was safe and everywhere it was not. There was the blind of bright light through the glass before everything went still and silent and dark outside. 

He heard the ticking of his heart. Heavy steps outside, a short, huffed out grunt. Dean couldn’t figure if they were human or not. The wood of the porch creaked, groaning under new weight, and Dean held his breath in his throat, trapping it there with fearful anticipation.

The door swung wide, and Dean grabbed the wrist that opened it. He swiped, knife catching across a forearm, and a shout, deep and worn-out, followed after it.

“Son of a bitch!”

The words stopped Dean cold—to hear something human and not from his own throat left him reeling, violently flinching away from the sound. Some days, he and Sam never even spoke, content to throaty noises on their tongues, howling at the moon and reveling in the echoes that sang back to them. Some days, Sam’s chatterbox voice, weaving through pitches and crackle-worn, was the only sound that occupied Dean’s world. Every day felt like they were the only ones left, existing in a hundred square miles of Earth-soil, a patch of dirt that was their own.

But not their own. Owned also by the man in front of him, with his heavy boots and deep voice—Dean breathed in and felt his heart stop, a flashfreeze of a scent he’d long forgotten. Cheap whiskey and gunpowder and fake pine. Tears slammed into his waterline, and he blinked quick to rid himself of them.

“Dad?” His voice felt unused in his mouth, a small, childish thing sitting behind his teeth.

Sam’s low, guttural warning drew Dean’s focus away, and Dean saw the glint of metal in the moonlight over the man’s shoulder as his brother swung; Dean rushed forward, shoving past the man and grabbing Sam’s forearm before it could come down, his own knife clattering to the ground. Sam lashed out, baring his teeth, growling as he fought against Dean’s hold. Dean kept him close, arm wrapping around Sam’s back, and he pressed his brother’s chest against his side as he struggled to wrangle the fight in him.

When Sam’s fist cuffed him across his chin, Dean finally snapped back, snarling into Sam’s face—his hand came up, catching Sam around the throat, thumb digging into the giving flesh of the underside of his brother’s chin. Sam immediately stilled in his grip, head tilting up in quickfire submission. Dean’s hand slid up his brother’s back to grip the nape of his neck as he slowly released the chokehold, rewarding Sam by letting him nose into his throat, the tension leaving Sam’s shoulders as he breathed in deep. Dean could feel the warmth of Sam’s breath on his skin, the press of his lips, and he stared at the man, features visible with the moonlight streaming through the door.

Dean recognized him, now. Not his father, but still a face he thought he’d lost long ago. 

“Bobby.”

Bobby stared back, wide-eyed, as if he didn’t believe they stood in front of him, bare and bathed in the cool silver light. “Sam, Dean,” he croaked out, and Sam clung tighter, “I’ve been looking for you boys for years.”


End file.
